Soapy Sensory Jars Activity for Toddlers

I call this a sensory jars activity for toddlers because I made it for George (who’s 18 months).

But don’t limit it to your toddlers. Babies and even preschoolers will enjoy this as well. I just know that we are always on the lookout for activities to do with toddlers, and this is a perfect one that might keep them busy in wonderment for awhile.

I filled up some old peanut butter jars halfway with water. (Yay! More upcycling!)

Then just add a few drops of food coloring of your choice. We did a blue, red and green.

It just takes a squirt of dish soap to make them soapy, bubbly sensory jars!

Then I handed to George for the day to explore and play! Toddlers are fascinated with the bubbles and even more fascinated that they can make the bubbles by shaking! Have you seen our more free play bubble sensory activity for toddlers?

More bubbles and more bubbles just by shaking up the sensory jars!

George also did some spinning and stacking with the jars.

It doesn’t matter what they do, or how they do it, the jars just need to be moving, and we love to get our toddlers moving, because, well I like to burn off their energy every day!

If you’re worried about spills, you can glue the lid on with school glue, just be sure to let it dry before letting them play with it.

We also ended up adding glitter to the soapy sensory jars. If I were to make it just a glitter sensory jar, I would have filled the jars full with water and added the glitter. But we were after the soapy, bubble effect for these sensory jars.

George loved the glitter and watched it settle.

But most of all, George wanted to stack the jars, to make towers. They’re kind of like big blocks!

Hey love this idea of glitter jars :) I tried it as I work in a nursery with children aged 2-3 years but when I did the glitter jars I put half water then the glitter and then food colour and look at them in the morning and they have gone cloudy do you know why this might be ??? Would I have to do them again because they looked so good before :)

You can also use corn syrup and put in different things such as buttons, shapes, the foil confetti, etc. I did this with empty water bottles for my kindergarten class to use for a cool down when they got feisty. They loved it!
The corn syrup can be thinned down some with water if it’s too thick.